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Early Irish ‘Feminism’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Gilbert Márkus OP
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There is a tendency among critics of ‘patriarchal’ culture or religion to point to the high status of women in early Irish or other Celtic societies as a model for change, suggesting that these societies displayed what one might call ‘actually existing feminism’. The assumption appears in otherwise scholarly works. Thus Dillon and Chadwick:

It is indeed impossible to have any true understanding of either Celtic history or Celtic literature without realizing the high status of Celtic women.

Elsewhere we are invited to ‘think of the superior place of women in early Celtic society’2. But what is the evidence for these claims?

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 73 , Issue 862 , July 1992 , pp. 375 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Dillon, and Chadwick, , The Celtic Realms, London, 1967, p. 25Google Scholar.

2 Mackey, J.P., An Introduction to Celtic Christianity, Edinburgh, 1989, p. 19Google Scholar.

3 Byrne, Francis J., Irish Kings and High Kings, London, 1973, page 164Google Scholar.

4 Muireann Nf Bhrolcháin, The Manuscript Tradition of the Banshenchas, Eriu 33, 1982, page 110.

5 Philip O'Leary, The Honour of Women in Early Irish Literature. Eriu xxxviii (1987), pp 27–44.

6 O'Leary, page 28–9.

7 Bricriu's Feast, in Early Irish Myths and Sagas, Jeffrey Gantz [Ed.], London, 1981, p. 240–1.

8 Fulton, Helen, Dafydd ap Gwilym and the European Context, Cardiff, 1989, page 77Google Scholar.

9 Kinsella, , Táin Bó Cuailnge, Oxford, 1969, page 131Google Scholar

10 O'Leary, page 38

11 Triads, 88. Quoted, in Kelly, Fergus, A Guide to Early Irish Law, Dublin, 1988, page 69Google Scholar.

12 O'Connor, Frank, A Short History of Irish Literature: a backward look, New York, 1967, p. 40Google Scholar

13 Bynum, Caroline Walker, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York, 1991, page 153Google Scholar.

14 Peter Hillmore, in The Observer, 26 January 1992.

15 All the following legal materials are from Binchy, D.A., The Legal Capacity of Women in regard to Contracts, in Studies in Early Irish Law, Thurneysen, (ed.) Dublin, 1936, pages 212 ffGoogle Scholar.

16 Kelly, Fergus, A Guide to Early Irish Law, Dublin, 1988, page 77Google Scholar

17 Bethu Brigte, ed. hAodha, Donncha O, Dublin 1978, p. 23Google Scholar.

18 Live of Saints from the Book of Lismore, ed. Stokes, Whitley, Oxford, 1890, 219–220Google Scholar.

19 Fell, Christine, Women in Anglo‐Saxon England, Oxford, 1984Google Scholar.

20 Bede, , Treatise on Old Testament Books of Esdras, quoted in Walsh and Bradley, History of the Irish Church. Dublin 1991 page 72Google Scholar.